Luzon, Visayas grids on yellow alert

MANILA, Philippines — The Luzon and Visayas grids were placed under yellow alert yesterday, with several power plants still on forced outage or running on derated capacity, according to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP).

Two power plants in Luzon – the Southwest Luzon Power Generation Corp. and the Sta. Rita power plants – are back online.

Meanwhile, 13 power plants are on forced outage in the Visayas grid, while five others are running on derated capacities, for a total of 698 megawatts unavailable to the grid.

Both Luzon and Visayas grids were placed on red alert yesterday, following the forced outage of 42 units of power plants in total.

Think tank Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC) said the Luzon grid might experience “a tight power supply” from May 13 to 26, leading to yellow alerts.

ICSC said the Visayas and Mindanao grids will sustain a sufficient power supply until June.

Meanwhile, Metro Manila was spared from a major power outage because of the Interruptible Load Program (ILP) that the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) implemented.

Big-load customers under the ILP program deloaded around 300 MW, according to Meralco vice president and head of corporate communications Joe Zaldarriaga.

“The 300 MW helped, instead of utilizing the Meralco grid, they used their own generator sets, which the consumers benefited from,” Zaldarriaga said at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum yesterday.

However, around 50,000 customers from parts of Bulacan, Cavite and Laguna were affected by the manual load dropping.

“We now need to create an industrial base and we need to provide reliable and affordable power in the countryside so that the industries will not crowd,” Meralco senior vice president Arnel Casanova said.

“Our problem concerns capacity. We need more power plants online, we need more capacity moving forward, we need more energy that we can distribute,” Zaldarriaga said.

The House of Representatives had set very stringent parameters for the possible use of nuclear energy as the country tries to achieve a very stable power supply in the near future, Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte revealed.

He said the chamber’s approval on third and